The World at Night

magic device, and he was its keeper, the hermit who hid the sacred ring. Some day, in times to come, the barbarians would break camp and trudge away down the dusty roads and then, starting with a single radio, they would somehow put everything back the way it had been.

Very sensitive to the touch, this blonde. Thin, excitable-she sucked in her breath when something felt good. Still, she was quiet about it. That was just common sense. They even pulled the blanket up over their heads, which made everything seem dark and secret and forbidden. Probably he’d laugh at that some day, but just then it wasn’t funny, because they really were out there, the secret police and their agents, and this was something they probably didn’t approve of. It wasn’t spelled out-just better to be quiet.

When they were done with one thing, and before they moved on to the next, Casson went to the phone, dialed Simic’s number, let it ring once, and hung up. Then he counted to sixty, and did it again. He wondered, as he was counting, if it was a good idea to keep Simic’s number in his address book. In fact, where did Simic keep his number?

He crawled back under the blanket, the blonde yawned and stretched, and they began to resettle themselves on the narrow couch. By his ear she said, “You had better be careful, my friend, doing that sort of thing.”

“Perhaps you prefer I do this sort of thing?”

“I do, yes. Anybody would.” A few minutes later she said, “Oh, you’re sweet, you know. Truly.” Then: “A pity if you invite them to kill you, cheri.”

Lunch, Chez Marcel, rognons de veau, a Hermitage from Jaboulet, 1931.

Hugo Altmann held his glass with three fingers at the top of the stem, canted it slightly to one side, poured it half full, then twisted the bottle as he turned it upright. He looked at the wine in his glass, gave it just a hint of a sniff and a swirl before he drank. “I like the script,” he said. “Pretty damn smooth for a first draft. Who is this Moreau?”

“Comes out of the provincial theatre, down by Lyons somewhere. Strange fellow, afraid of his own shadow, keeps to himself pretty much. Has a little cottage out past Orly-lives with his mother, I think. No telephone.”

“Maybe I could meet him, sometime. A very sure hand, Jean-Claude, for the ‘provincial theatre, down by Lyons.’ “

Casson shrugged and smiled, accepting the compliment, proud of his ability to unearth a secret talent. He suspected Altmann knew how much he’d depended on Louis Fischfang for his scripts, and he’d intended “Moreau” as a fiction convenient for both of them. Altmann, however, seemed to think Moreau actually existed.

“Maybe some day,” he said. “Right now, Hugo, I need him to think about Hotel Dorado and nothing else. If he meets you, he might start having ambitions.”

“Well, all right.” Altmann chased the last of the brown sauce around his plate with a piece of bread. “That banker in the first scene- Lapont? Lapere? Don’t let anything happen to him. He’s magnificent, truly loathsome-I can just see him.”

“I’ll tell Moreau he’s on the right track. Now, make it really good.”

Altmann smiled and took a sip of wine.

“I’ve been thinking,” Casson said. “Maybe we should consider a different location.”

“Not the Cote d’Azur?”

“It’s commonplace, everybody’s been there.”

“That’s the point, no?”

“Mmm-I think we have the plot, Hugo. But it’s the setting I worry about. The feel of a place that’s not the everyday world-come August, you leave your work, you leave the daily life, and you go there. Something special about it. I don’t want anybody thinking, ‘Well, I wouldn’t sell that hotel-I’d put in a damn fine restaurant and put some paint on the facade.’ “

“No, I guess not.”

The waiter came to take the plates away. “There’s a reblochon today, gentlemen,” he said. “And pears.”

“Bring it,” Altmann said.

“I’ve been thinking about Spain,” Casson said.

“Spain?”

“Yes. Down on the Mediterranean. Someplace dark, and very quiet.

The proprietaires are still French. Expatriates. But the clients are a little more adventurous. They go to Spain for their holidays.”

“Hm.”

“Anyhow, I’d like to go and have a look. Scout locations.”

“All right, it shouldn’t be a problem. But, I don’t know, it doesn’t, somehow-Spain?”

“Could be the key to it all, Hugo.”

Altmann began preparing a cigar, piercing the leaf at the end with a metal pick he took from his pocket. He looked up suddenly, pointed the cigar at Casson. “You’re a liar,” he said. Then he broke out in a wide grin. “Have to take, uh, somebody down there with you, Jean-Claude? Just in case you need help?” He laughed and shook his head- you scoundrel, you almost had me there.

Casson smiled, a little abashed. “Well,” he said.

Altmann snapped his lighter until it lit, then warmed the cigar above the blue flame. “Romantic in Spain, Jean-Claude. Guitars and so forth. And one doesn’t run into every damn soul in the world one knows. You don’t really want to move the story there, do you?”

“No,” Casson said. “There’s a lady involved.”

Altmann nodded to himself in satisfaction, then counted out a sheaf of Occupation reichsmarks on top of the check. For a German in an occupied city, everything was virtually free. “Come take a walk with me, Jean-Claude,” he said. “I want to pick up some cashmere sweaters for my wife.”

The following afternoon Altmann sent over a letter on Continental stationery and, after a phone call, Casson took it to the Gestapo office in the old Interior Ministry building on the rue des Saussaies. The officer he saw there occupied a private room on the top floor. SS-OBERSTURMBANNFUHRER-lieutenant colonel-Guske wore civilian clothes, an expensively tailored gray suit, and had the glossy look of a successful businessman. A big, imposing head with large ears, sparse black hair-carefully combed for maximum coverage-and the tanned scalp of a man who owns a sailboat or a ski chalet, perhaps both.

His French was extremely good. “So, we are off to sunny Spain. Not so sunny just now, I suppose.”

“No. Not in January.”

“You’ve been there before?”

“Several times. Vacations on the beaches below Barcelona, in the early thirties.”

“But not during the civil war.”

“No, sir.”

“Are you a Jew, Casson?”

“No. Catholic by birth. By practice, not much of anything.”

“I regret having to ask you that, but I’m sure you understand. The film business being what it is, unfortunately …”

A knock at the door, a secretary entered and handed Guske a dossier. Casson could see his name, lettered across the top of the cardboard folder, and the official stamp of the Paris Prefecture de Police. Guske opened it on his desk and started reading, idly turning pages, at one point going back in the record and searching for something, running an index finger up and down the margin. Ah yes, there it was.

He moved forward again, making the sort of small gestures-rhythmic bobbing of the head, pursing of the lips-that indicated irritation with petty minds that noted too many details, an inner voice saying yes, yes, then what, come on.

At last he looked up and smiled pleasantly. “All in order.” He squared the sheets of paper, closed the dossier, and tied it shut with its ribbon. Then he took Altmann’s letter and read it over once more. “Will your assistant be coming to see us?” he asked.

“No. Change of plans,” Casson said. “I’m going alone.”

“Very well,” Guske said. He drew a line through a sentence in Altmann’s letter and initialed the margin, wrote a comment at the bottom and initialed that as well, then clipped the letter to the dossier and made a signal-Casson did not see how it was done-that brought the secretary back. When she left he said, “Come by tomorrow, after